To go daringly
by ElapsedSpiralling
Summary: Utter, utter crack. Hint of slash.    Amy watches a certain science fiction movie. The Doctor possibly insinuates that said science fiction movie may be not so fictional.


**To go daringly where few people have travelled in the past**

"Amy Pond. I take you into space. I take you on board an unbelievably advanced time-space-ship-living-thingy and you want to watch movies."

Amy bided her time, waiting until he had given a displeased wriggle before smacking her lips together to form a resounding "yep". The Doctor deflated.

"Look," she scowled, leaning over the back of the sofa to consider the dejected looking figure he cut, "I've had a long day of running away from aliens who can just magic themselves wherever they want to be – which makes the running _away _pretty hard to pull off."

"It wasn't magic, Amy, it was-"

She wafted her hand aggressively at him.

"I don't want any more running today. I don't want any more physics lessons today. I just want to eat some chocolate, watch a movie and sleep. Just because you don't seem to sleep doesn't mean you should knock those who do."

"But your choice of movie-"

"It's good!"

"It's like, like a personal insult!"

"It's fun!"

"It's Star Trek!" the Doctor came to stand in front of the curiously small, curiously old and boxy television set that resided in the living room Amy had discovered. He blocked a scowling Jim Kirk from view as he huffed "In case you hadn't noticed, Amy, you are _trekking_ through _space_. And time!" he cast a cool look back over his shoulder, "Beat that, Captain Clarke."

"Actually, in this movie they also move about in time too," Amy noted. The Doctor shot her a miserable little scowl.

"Not the way I do. With me, you get to see gladiators-"

"They do that."

"And when you're missing having a pet about I take you to a planet full of adorable fluffy things!"

"They have those," Amy's tone turned distracted, "Move! You're blocking angst filled Zachary Quinto."

Reluctantly, the Doctor shuffled to one side.

"Sorry… Hang on… you're telling me you're watching this for-"

"The eye candy. Yes," Amy agreed around a mouthful of chocolate. The Doctor came to slump on the sofa beside her. He stealthily snapped off a piece of the chocolate bar before Amy could object, licked the piece, appeared horrified and offered it back to her. With a roll of her eyes she allowed herself to be fed the not-entirely-ruined sweet.

"Amy," he said plaintively, "I don't have a bowl cut. Look at me, all bowl cut free. What's he got that I haven't?"

"Conflict."

"Oh come on, you know I've got that in spades."

"Human mother, alien father."

"So have I!"

Amy's mouth, chocolatey and moist, hung open momentarily. The Doctor shook his head.

"Another time; long, long story. I've never had a bowl cut-well maybe I came close when I had that recorder but it wasn't _quite_. Time Lords hold logic up above all other pursuits too, they're stuffy too, they have silly jumpers too. They have odd physiognomy, strange names and their planet was destroyed. I've got the lot!"

Amy leant across and wrapped an arm about his shoulders.

"Don't be jealous of a movie. You're a lovely little alien. You're my lovely little alien. Shame your blood isn't green though, like Spock's. I'd like it if you were my little green man."

"Oh don't humour me," he mumbled in a rather forced attempt at misery, "I know I can't compete. Watch the rest of the silly thing then."

"I will."

"Good."

Kirk threatened to fall off a few more precariously high ledges before Amy turned, frowning, to study the Doctor's miserable pout with a frown of her own.

""Captain Clarke"?"

"Hm?"

"You said Captain Clarke before."

"Oh, er, slip of the tongue. Kirk. Of course."

"Everyone knows it's Kirk. Literally everyone. And you know everything."

"Well, I got my tongue in a twist."

"Doctor," Amy used her First Warning tone.

"Look! Quick, Kirk's being all brash yet bold!" he pointed with an insistent finger but Amy merely continued to scowl.

"Doctor," Second Warning.

"And Spock's all sweaty!"

That deserved a momentary glance but then it was on to the Final Warning.

"Doc. Tor."

"Alright," sheepishly, the Doctor wriggled under Amy's rather more vice-like grip, "I might have said Clarke for a reason other than a slip of the tongue."

"Never!"

"It's true," the Doctor agreed solemnly, "I said Clarke because he is Clarke."

"Doctor, that's either Chris Pine or Jim Kirk, depending on how you look at it."

"No, I mean the actual man," the Doctor seemed to consider taking another chocolate, fingers creeping spider-like in Amy's direction before he had a change of heart.

"Doctor."

"Yes, Amy, I'm the only other person here, no need to keep saying my name."

"Doctor-"

"Or do, that's fine as well."

Amy grabbed the retreating fingers with her free hand and gave them a squeeze.

"You're telling me Jim Kirk and Spock and all the rest of them are real?"

The Doctor mused for a moment, lips pursed.

"Yes, I suppose that's exactly what I'm saying."

"How?"

The Doctor looked up from his reconfiguration of the Console (reconfiguring the damned living room into an Olympic quality arena for ping pong, not that he'd told Amy this yet).

"Amy, please stop asking me about it."

"Doctor, you know I'm impossible to wear down. Every single haircut Rory has had in his adult life was picked by me. You don't stand a chance."

"…And you're right," he set down his sonic screwdriver, ran a hand through his hair and flopped down in the Captain's chair, "Fine. Most of the things you saw last night are real."

"How can they be?"

"Alright, alright," the Doctor grumbled, dragging one foot back and forth on the floor of the Tardis until _she_ gave a rather icy blue glow. He stilled the foot apologetically (apparently all women were out to get him).

"Think about it this way: what's a good way of getting people to believe that you saw aliens?"

"I…I don't know," Amy admitted, rather quietly, "Any time I tried to convince people that you were real I got shipped off to another psychiatrist."

"Precisely," the Doctor agreed, "Tough one to crack. So, as mad as it sounds, it's actually easier to get people to _want_ to believe a fictional world is real than claim that world exists."

"Wait… so you're saying the guy who created Star Trek actually saw this universe or these people for real then made a show about it?"

"And it was in no way my fault," the Doctor agreed solemnly. For all of five seconds. Before he cracked under the intense scrutiny of Amy's glare, "Alright, yes, he wanted to see how Earth progressed, I took him to the twenty third century, he met a few people who had done amazing things with their lives and he came back and made a gigantic franchise out of it all."

"You idiot. But, wait, why Kirk and not Clarke?"

"Sort of a small interplanetary war/Armageddon situation arose that could only be quelled by my promising that he would cover his tracks a little."

"Oh. Okay," Amy gnawed on her lip and toyed with one of the Tardis' controllers (outside, the Tardis' windscreen wiper emerged and wiped away nothing rather miserably).

"So are you happy now?"

"Sure, sure," Amy agreed, moving to toy with a bell (that did nothing at all. The Doctor was not actually aware of this).

The Doctor tracked her idle, eerily casual movements through narrowed eyes.

"Do you want to go and see them? Only a brief chat, mind you," he said, practically chewing on each word in his irritation.

"."

Before returning to the Console, the Doctor flung Amy a coat from the rack by the door. Puzzledly, she caught it.

"Is the Enterprise cold?"

"No," the Doctor scowled, smacking the console's typewriter keys with unnecessary force, "But the more layers you're wearing, the less likely Clarke will be able to make some inappropriate comment."

"One last thing," the Doctor said, hand on the Tardis door handle, "Just a little thing to keep in mind."

Amy, shifting her feet, impatient for the off, raised her eyebrows at him expectantly.

"Yes? What?"

"The Galvans hate me. Quite a bit."

"Galvans?"

"Oh, Vulcans to you. Remember when we're on their ship: we had to change things, just enough."

And with that, he stepped outside.

It was, Amy supposed, like someone had tried to recreate the movie a long time after having seen it. The ship was still very shiny, with long and winding corridors but was a rather violent shade of green throughout. The female officers had quite sensible uniforms (not a mini-skirt in sight) and what Amy assumed to be the Starfleet insignia was rather more ornate and squiggly.

Like a dab hand, the Doctor navigated the corridors, shoulders a little hunched and expression purposefully gloomy and gloomier at Amy's obvious amusement with her surroundings.

"Ready for the Bridge?" he asked, jabbing a control on one wall, "Why do I even ask? Don't scream."

"Wh-" the rest of Amy's sentence dissolved into a scream as she found herself curiously flung through ceilings, floors, walls easily and painlessly as though she was simply a ghost. She was finally set down quite roughly on the floor of a large, circular room. Ahead of her she saw a gigantic window and stars splattering across its glass at an impossible speed.

"Invisible lift," the Doctor explained in a mutter before smiling weakly at those on the bridge.

"The lift wasn't invisible in the movie!"

"'Course not, imagine how much that'd cost in special effects," the Doctor snorted.

In the middle of the room a chair swivelled upon a pedestal. Sat there, almost as though enthroned, was a middle aged man with jet black hair, piercingly dark brown eyes and a smile wide enough to park the Tardis inside it. Amy failed to suppress a smile of her own.

"His hair's-"

"Yes, because," the Doctor gestured across to another man, a blond, who strode up alongside the Captain in an almost protective manner, one hand coming to rest on the back of Clarke's chair. Again, Amy was a little taken aback – the eyebrows weren't so much eyebrows as a completely different bone structure giving the appearance of curved eyebrows without any actual hair. The ears were right, Amy saw, as was the rather unfortunate haircut, albeit in golden blond. The eyes were the most startling difference however, although not necessarily in a bad sense: they were a pure, vibrant blue with no discernable pupil, iris or "white". And, yet, Amy felt curiously, she was perfectly aware of when the man was directing his gaze at her.

"S'a telepathy thing," Doctor muttered to her, by way of explanation, "They got that much right."

"The blond's good," Amy muttered back, "I'm fine with the blond." The Doctor gave a miserable little sigh in return.

"Ah, X~w-"

"OI!" the Doctor squawked as he practically rushed Captain Clarke, "None of that!"

Clarke's grin, if possible, grew even wider.

"Sorry, sorry. I forgot the trade- we get altered and no one calls you by your real name, right?" the man said, his accent American, warm and sunny, "Forgive me, _Doctor_. Honda, you have the con. Catching up with old friends for a moment."

"Wait, Doctor's not your name?" Amy hissed before uncertainly stepping down to join the Time Lord.

"Amy, that would mean that my human mother thought "The" was a good first name and that "Doctor" is my family name, do be reasonable," the Doctor grumbled before adding, with a wave of his hand, "More on that later."

"So who's this?" the Captain extended his hand to Amy who offered her own with no real knowledge of having moved it. The man gave the back a quick kiss before continuing to grin in a manner that Amy felt sure must have hurt the muscles of his face, unless he was especially well practiced in these grins (and it seemed he was), "A little better looking than that guy you had with you last time."

"So you're Clarke-"

"Captain John Clarke of the USS Endeavour, at your service-"

"Amy Pond."

"You see," Clarke said smoothly, "That was just on the tip of my tongue."

"Captain," the Galvan muttered, deep and disproving at Clarke's side, "Perhaps we should conduct this conversation in your office."

"Fine, T'Pok. Office!" Clarke yelled and again, Amy screamed as she was flung seemingly through the floor and into a gleaming, if green, office. The rest of the party landed nimbly on their feet (indeed T'Pok scarcely seemed to move at all, merely sliding through the floor). Clarke gently caught Amy by the elbow.

"Damn, you're new to this huh? Well I've got you," he said with a wink, "And I'm not complaining about it either."

"Captain," T'Pok muttered again. Amy realised she recognised the tone as her own Warning Tone, as used on the Doctor.

"Sorry, sorry," the Captain strode up to T'Pok and, to Amy's bafflement, did something that could only be classed as nuzzling the Galvan's jaw for the briefest of moments with his nose. On noticing Amy's stares the pair lifted their left hands in synchrony. Curious, glowing tattooed bands appeared briefly about their ring fingers before disappearing from view, "You know I jest T'Pok."

"Jest is somewhat lacking in Galvan culture, Captain."

"Yeah yeah, well she's married too, it's all fine and above board," Clarke smirked.

Amy shot the Doctor a glance. Again, the man leant casually down to mutter to her.

"Well it was 1960s primetime television Pond."

"Ah. Gotcha."

"So, how are you finding this guy?" Clarke asked , jabbing a thumb at the Doctor as he went to pour some curiously gas-like drinks from a spiralling bottle into equally twisted glasses. He handed one to Amy with something verging on a bow. Amy shot a "look, look at what he's doing, why don't you do that?" smile at the Doctor as she accepted her drink.

"Oh, fine. A bother at times but I can handle it," Amy watched how T'Pok simply breathed in his own beverage before following suit. It was curiously fruity but the spice tickled her nose to such an extent that she wound up sneezing a little of the steam-like substance back out.

"Be careful," Clarke warned with a grin, "T'Pok can't get drunk on this stuff, you want to sip-"

"Or just sort of inhale a fraction, he means," the Doctor explained. It was all rather a little too late however, as Amy felt her face flush as red as a traffic light.

"Doctor."

The Doctor paused in sniffing, slurping and sighing into his own beverage, making curious little clouds with the fog (the equivalent of blowing bubbles into a liquid beverage, Amy supposed), to look uneasily at the Galvan.

"T'Pok?"

"Have you endeavoured to correct "Vulcan"," the man said the word with evident distaste, "physiognomy as I implored you to?"

"Well," the Doctor decided to inhale his own drink in one, a little steam escaping his lips as he winced, "…No. It's a bit too late for that T'Pok. They really like that particular idea."

"My race does not appreciate the insinuation."

"It does make you suitably different to the Time Lords, however."

The Galvan frowned – not with his mouth, of course, which remained in a thin line. Still, Amy sensed the frown pouring off the man, the irritation swirling in his eyes.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Well, our races are indirectly related," the Doctor explained, setting down the glass carefully, neatly on the table top so as to avoid Amy's curious look, T'Pok's glare and Clarke's smirk, "So I thought it might help to set us apart, you know, for when the Galvans actually do make contact with Earth."

"So you said what?"

"Oh, just some stuff," the Doctor said, getting progressively quieter, "About going into a violent mating frenzy every so often."

"I liked that bit," Amy and Clarke said, in near unison. The Captain smothered a smile at his husband's more obvious scowl.

Amy enjoyed the rest of their stay, feeling warmed about the edges by the alcohol. It was Clarke who seemed genuinely happy to talk to her, explaining the finer details of some of their recent missions (and undoubtedly spoiling the plot of the sequel, Amy imagined). T'Pok, on the other hand, seemed awkward in her presence, merely offering the occasional nod to verify the truth of Clarke's rather bombastic claims. Instead, it was the Doctor who engaged the Galvan. Amy couldn't help the easy, alcohol-lubricated laughter that escaped her at the clash in their exchange, the Galvan employing the fewest words in the most cogent order whilst the Doctor opted for phrases such as "thingummy" and "you know, those little wotsits, the really little ones".

The group were roused from their – chat? Discussion? Bizarre, unlikely-to-be-believed,even-by-Rory escapades? – by an alarm, bleeping insistently overhead.

"I need to get back to the bridge Doctor," Clarke said firmly, setting his own glass and T'Pok's back down on the counter, "Though it was good seeing you again."

"Was it 'eck," the Doctor muttered.

"Well, if only to make sure you've not done us an even greater disservice recently," Clarke smirked.

"Oh no," Amy said with a shake of her head, "If anything you're just portrayed as hotter and younger now."

"Intriguing," T'Pok muttered, his eyes widening for the briefest of moments.

Clarke gave Amy's hand another little kiss and the Doctor a wink.

"Later guys. Much later, with all the love and respect in the universe, if you know what I mean."

"Quite," the Doctor agreed, "It was her fault anyway, she insisted."

"Oh, well I'll forgive it a little," Clarke grinned, tom-cattish at Amy before being silently ordered to desist by a glare from T'Pok. T'Pok gave the pair a nod.

"Continue to exist for a significant and extended period of time and do so in a productive and ultimately enjoyable fashion."

Amy stared blankly for a moment before mouthing an "oh" which became an "oh dear". She awkwardly gave the customary Vulcan greeting with one hand in return before stepping "inside" the lift once more. The pair whisked from sight, T'Pok turned to stare at his husband.

"What did I do to deserve such a vulgar hand gesture?"

"There," the Doctor said firmly, as though scolding a small child, "Enough. You've met them, touched them and gotten sozzled with them. That's a one off Pond, be sure of that."

Amy gave a solemn, drunken nod before tilting her head sweetly towards him.

"X-squiggly line-w-"

"None of that Pond."

"Alright, _The_ _Doctor_," she cooed.

"What?"

"Can we go and meet some Jedis now?"

The Doctor looked up from the Rubik cube looking part of his console.

"What?"

"Star Wars? Jedis? The Empire? The Force?"

"…How on earth could any of _that_ be real?" the Doctor snorted, giving his bicycle bell a ring, "Honestly Pond, apply some common sense."


End file.
